A competition for the post was announced by the Georgian Ministry of Culture and Monuments Protection in late February, following the resignation of Tamara Tatishvili at the end of her three year term. 

Tbilisi nativeJanelidze (born 1955) began working as a director and scriptwriter in the Georgian Film studio in 1981. She won the State Prize and Iakob Gogebashvili Pedagogical Prize  for the film Lullaby, and twice won the Russian Film Academy Prize “Nika,” in 1987 for Best Script for the film Repentance and in 2011 for the Best Foreign Language Film for the documentaryWill There Be a Theater Up There?!. She has also been awarded prizes at international film festivals in Pesaro (Italy), Lagovo (Poland), Moscow, Yalta (Russia), Montpellier (France), and Wiesbaden (Germany) among others.

Janelidze’s other positions include host of a radio programme, co-artistic director of the festival of debut films TBC20/12, author and presenter of a film programme on Georgia’s public TV, book author, theatre director, and former member of the GNFC Supervisory Board.

In 1999, together with an actress Nanuka Khuskivadze, she founded the film studio N&N Ltd., and is currently the Director of the studio.